I saw the International Space Station tonight while gazing at the stars with my telescope (wasn't planning on it), and right in front of the ISS there was a less bright object on the same orbital path, just a few degrees in front (maybe the width of two fingers held at arms length). I ran inside and got my binoculars and watched the ISS (the other object faded before I could observe it), then came in the house to try and figure out what the hell I saw.

Turns out its the Japanese Transport Vehicle HTV-6, it just left the ISS and it will stay in front of it for a week or so doing what appears to be quite an exciting electrodynamic experiment with a tether. remember the previous tether experiment, maybe a decade ago, an unexpected bolt of electricity fried the tether. I think we are not being told the truth, these guys do experiments up there that might be related to the story they publish, yet could be much more secretive/technologically important then advertised.

how can there be any forces without the current flow? (see last image)

also notice mention of the "HTV's electric potential" My theory is that what we think we know about satellite orbits can be totally off, the forces that hold satellites up might be more electrodynamic then newtonian. At those fantastic velocities, small charged objects moving through a magnetic field produces lift in the upward direction (orthogonal to the velocity vector and the magnetic vector, so never depletes the kinetic energy) (notice they can eject electrons with electron guns in the vacuum of space (actually a plasma), so this leaves the spacecraft positively charged, and moving through the magnetic field of the earth West to East the vector direction of the force is predominantly upwards (remember magnetic south pole is at geographic North pole)